Repair ships as a long-war investment

Would vulnerable Cold War bases make repair ships more important?

Potentially, but Cold War planning often assumed a short conventional or nuclear conflict and therefore underinvested in the sustainment needed for a long war.

Short-war assumptions discouraged investment in sustainment. Cold War planning often treated prolonged repair capacity as irrelevant because a conventional conflict was expected to escalate quickly, even when vulnerable bases favored mobile support. The same pattern appeared in 1914, when leaders expected troops home by Christmas and sent a British Expeditionary Force of roughly 100,000 into a war dominated by million-man armies. Its importance at Mons did not change the mismatch between the initial plan and the scale of the conflict. Repair ships, depot ships, and supply ships instead assume that operations may continue for months. USS Klondike shows how workshops, spare parts, and personnel could keep destroyers forward through ordinary losses and wear.